BeachRider

HP’s Acquisition Further Pits Tech Giants Against One Another

3Com's 8800/7900/7700 offerings aren't typically favored over CSCO's 6500/4500 strategy. Management of 10+ switches also favors CSCO (mainly due to software). HP even had CSCO switches for its blades, because their proprietary switches got into management problems interoperating with CSCO.

It is clear the CSCO 'declared war' when they issued blades, so some response from HP was needed, there just needs to be more on the planning-horizon to justify 3Com as the best response.

Sun-Oracle Deal Remakes the IT Landscape

I don't get why ORCL wanted SPARC or the IA32 business. I don't see HP as being interested in it, at all. IBM would expect ORCL to struggle with it.
I agree on the tape/disk stuff. It just aggravates HP (a traditional ORCL ally).
Did Ellison just need to bail out Sun's board of directors?